Sweet music

I’d like to rearrange the mountain peaks and change direction of the wind. But I think I’ll go on my way today and share smiles with a friend.

Hey there dear reader. Sorry, it looks like you caught me wandering off with old time verse again.

I continually tell myself that I belong in the here and now in this our modern day electronic civilization. But something always tries to pull me back to bygone times, those days of long ago.

It’s difficult attempting to ride the wave of constant change, especially when everything around me so rapidly evolves. Being raised in an era of horse and carts with no electricity or running water in my childhood home; well it’s quite a contrast to today’s world.

I wonder if there’s a term in English for too many changes in one lifetime - overwhelm or cultural shock maybe?

The world I grew up in was one of a simple life with hard working common people struggling to get by in a poor agrarian society.

A darkness hung over the world at that time, for a terrible war had just ended. Most adults still seemed somewhat in shock. There was a tragic sadness in the air. I could feel it in my young bones.

During the war, tomorrow and future survival had seemed very uncertain. The world had looked about ready to come to an end, and it almost did. It was through sheer luck that it was saved and evil defeated at the last possible moment.

It was not something to easily place in perspective and revert to a normal existence right afterwards.

The late forties and the fifties constituted a time of healing and slow recovery from the horrors of the violence, death and destruction of war. This was especially so in Europe.

In this world of ours there is light and there is darkness. It’s more than the presence or absence of brightness of day or night. I would have to say it’s the light and darkness of the soul.

War appears to me as a deadly infectious, contagious disease which reoccurs over and over in our world. It is an evil, intentionally destructive force that suddenly wipes away all the good we have accomplished through generations. In it’s aftermath we are left empty, bare and distraught.

It takes great hope, courage and perseverance for the survivors to begin again and attempt to build a new and better world. But somehow they do.

The human spirit is ever so resilient.

Then the sun rises each morning bringing a new ray of hope. Children play and laugh in the streets and playgrounds once more. The enjoyment of living slowly returns and the sweet music of life continues.

In my life I’ve been very lucky in catching and living through the upward or ascending curve of the war and peace cycle.

The lot of mankind has gotten ever so much better over the past half century or so. Technology, prosperity and standards of living have increased by leaps and bounds in this short period of time.

Peacetime allows mankind to rise out of the mud, insanity and wholesale slaughter of war.

But let us not forget or blot out the horrors of the years preceding this our time of good fortune.

Oh well, I guess I’m rambling away again with thoughts of long ago.

Well thanks for lending an ear dear reader. Hope you check in again next week for another chat.